AI deepfake scams are on the rise

In the first half of the year, voice security firm Hiya flagged nearly 20 billion calls as suspected spam, which equates to over 107 million spam calls everyday. The firm put out a report which showed spam flag rates of more than 20% of unknown calls in 25 out of the 42 countries it analysed, with some spam flag rates above 50%. 

The report looked at the volume, frequency and type of phone spam and fraud across major global markets between January and June this year.  

Scams which use AI-generated voice-cloning technology to impersonate people or organisations increased in the first half of the year. Hiya highlighted an incident in the lead up to the US primary election in January in which voters in New Hampshire received robocalls impersonating Joe Biden, and expects that voice-cloning impersonation scam tactics will continue to be on the rise in 2024 and beyond. 

The UK had a spam flag rate of 28% of all unknown calls, and 3% of those calls were fraud during the period. ‘Popular’ phone scams across the UK in the first half of the year included tax scams which impersonated HMRC, Amazon scams and credit card scams. Cryptocurrency, energy-related and immigration scams were also on the increase.

In the US, health insurance and medicare scams were popular, as well as other insurance scams such as auto, home, and life. Tax scams were also on the rise in the first half leading up to the April 15 tax filing deadline.

France and Spain have had the worst spam across Europe for the past seven quarters, while globally Brazillians received the most spam calls per month.

“Phone fraud, spam and the emerging use of AI-driven deepfake voice scams are escalating threats to the voice channel, affecting every phone user across every major market,” said Kush Parikh, President of Hiya. “The voice channel deserves the same level of vigilance that enterprises apply to cybersecurity. In fact, voice security must be swiftly integrated into cybersecurity strategies, as it represents a significant vulnerability in protecting enterprises.”

In similarly grim security news, earlier this month Verizon warned of escalating risks in mobile and IoT security, with 53% of those surveyed stating that they have experienced ‘severe security incidents that led to data loss or system downtime.’